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Source of Gore’s prosperity ignored by federal authorities

By {screen_name}
Sunday, May 2, 2010

Former Vice President Al Gore, now a global carbon-credit trader, and his wife, Tipper, have acquired spiffy new West Coast digs. The Gores spent nearly $9 million for a house in the Montecito, Calif., area. The new place sits on 1.5 acres of property overlooking the Pacific Ocean and is tastefully appointed with a swimming pool, spa and fountains. Built in the Italian style, the Plaza Gore sports five bedrooms, nine bathrooms and six fireplaces. — News item.

“Now, what we’re doing, I want to be clear, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” — President Barack Obama, April 28.

A good guess is that the president wasn’t talking about the former VP when Obama was discussing Wall Street in Quincy, Ill., but he is opening the door, is he not?

Well, not for the anointed ones.

One wonders, how long Gore’s clown-shoe-sized carbon footprint would last in a world in which individuals were allowed no more than five tons of carbon emissions per year?

That might sound like a lot, but it is, supposedly, one quarter of the average emissions generated (insert giggle here) by a single U.S. citizen.

For 5.5 billion of the world’s 6 billion or so people, Gore’s conspicuous consumption probably looks like what the president says is “enough money.”

And that doesn’t even take into account the former veep’s clodhopping ways on the Earth’s ever-so-delicate environment.

One wonders exactly how much in the way of emissions Leadfoot Gore generates in the course of his travels to and from Tennessee, California and Washington, D.C., not to mention Berlin and Copenhagen and London and, well, you get the idea.

Actually we can guess, based on the way he lit up the sky at his 10,000-square-foot Tennessee mansion back in 2006.

Back then, when he thought no one was watching, Gore was an energy hog at a giant trough, gobbling up an average of 16,000 kilowatt hours a month — more than 10 times the average for his neighbors — for an average monthly electric bill of $1,206. The typical home of his Nashville neighbors used about 1,300 kilowatt hours a month.

Yes, Gore took the house green, green as Kermit the frog, and yes, it was easy being green — after he got caught.

One might think that an earnest, hard-working regulator, say one still smarting after watching Bernie Madoff make off with so much for so long, might take note of the Gore pied-a-terre and thoughtfully stroke his chin.

One might think that a government watchdog on the alert to protect the hapless investor from market manipulations, the likes of which have landed Goldman Sachs in hot congressional water, might raise a skeptical eyebrow on learning that the global-warming hoofraw on which Gore is making such a pile is collapsing in a pile of bad data, incriminating e-mails, stonewalling that would make Nixon look transparent as freshly squeegeeed glass, and blatant misuse of science.

One might think that such a regulator would wonder, in view of all of this, that if this monkey is making such real money, what exactly is the organ grinder selling?

Such regulators exist, of course, and they keep a close eye on Santa Claus (“We’ll catch him red-mittened one day”) and the Easter Bunny (Check the eggs. Rabbit, egg, it don’t add up.)

But no regulator will look twice at Al Gore because he’s the living refutation of that hoary maxim: “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”